April 2011

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I met with a local Patch editor. The conversation was mostly to introduce Lamarque Polvado's ConnectionsKids.com (as he was visiting from Texas), and to talk about autism and special needs.

During the conversation, the editor surprised me by being very condescending about blogging. To sum up her attitude: blogging wasn't "professional" and "had no standards". I let her know at the time I found her attitude -- well, at the very least, insulting to me as a multi-platform blogger, but suggested we let the matter drop as it was off-topic.

On Friday [April 22, 2011], Patch editors were told to start recruiting bloggers in preparation for the launch of its blog platform on May 4. Yesterday, Farnham issued a memo with concrete targets: Each editor is expected to sign up five to 10 new bloggers by then.

“The introduction of blogging on our sites is far more than just the release of a new feature,” wrote Farnham. “It is a full-on course correction heading Patch in the direction we want to go.”

I don't know if the editor's attitude was her own (she had just earned a graduate degree in journalism), or the official Patch attitude. Good luck with recruiting the bloggers. I might donate some content for local causes, but I'm really not interested in full-scale unpaid labor.

5 months late, Matt Carey, a research staff member at Hitachi GST, with a PhD in physics from UCSD, has revealed himself to be the notorious blogger “Sullivan.”

In a previous post, I speculated that Sullivan was actually Bonnie Offit, wife of a not-to-be-mentioned vaccine millionaire. Mr. Carey’s personal outing of himself renders my speculation incorrect.

As many ravenous members of the dark side I’m sure have mentioned, I also made a simple promise that if Sullivan was NOT Bonnie Offit, I would not utter said name of said leader of the Dark Side.

I also offered to give up the website www.pauloffit.com

Apparently, Mr. Carey is a parent of a child with autism. Matt, if you’re reading this, note that I really have no interest in writing about or attacking other parents, and you can expect similar treatment. My enemies are the AAP, CDC, and the vaccine makers themselves, as well as their well-paid minions. Since you don’t appear to be in any of those camps and have a kid just like me, I don’t have the heart.

If I live 5 lifetimes, I will never understand where your reverence for not to be named profiteer of vaccines comes from, or why you choose to use your precious time to defend him.

I’m also pleased to see you now blogging in your own name, as all AoA writers and parents do. I think it’s a simple way to demonstrate courage, conviction, and integrity in the things you write.

‘Nuff said, in the world I live in, a deal’s a deal, even if you took five months to get here. Just email me, plenty on the dark side know how to find me, and we can work out the details.

As Kev points out I chose this week to out myself. The title for my talk at IMFAR has been posted online and it was time. As part of Kev’s post, he noted that Mr. Handley made some commitments on condition that I step forward. I doubted that Mr. Handley would make good on his commitments, even going so far as to write that I didn’t think he had the integrity to do so. For those comments I offer a sincere apology. I was wrong.

On important point to make here. It wasn’t JB Handley or a regular of the Age of Autism who outed me. It was former members of the autism hub blogs in the comments for the “Bonnie Offit” piece by Mr. Handley.

On the other hand, one person with whom I have disagreed over the years figured out my name long before any of this “Bonnie Offit” mess. Rather than out me, that person emailed me with the information of how I was exposing myself. It is that person’s integrity that is the biggest lesson I have learned from these events.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

I have lived in the Silicon Valley my entire life -- there are a wealth of resources for teaching, for special needs, and for health.

But that isn't true everywhere, even within a few hours' drive of Norman Mineta San José International Airport. And it is one area where recent technological advantages can make a big impact. I'm going to discuss three: one reading-remediation-related and two related to autism.

IQ testing.... is simply a task that involves multiple neurological functions, only one of which is general intelligence (which itself is a tricky concept, as there are many components to what we would think of as intelligence, and many different kinds of intelligence). We need to think of IQ as a measure of how people perform on IQ tests, and not necessarily of any one specific neurological function. Since IQ is measuring many variables at once (memory, fund of knowledge, judgment, perception, cognitive processing speed, attention, language, test-taking endurance, and yes – even motivation) it’s difficult to separate out these variables. It can be done to some extent, and the most elaborate battery of IQ tests (called neuropsychological testing) is designed to separate out at least several components of intelligence, like verbal-IQ from memory IQ.

This does not mean that IQ testing is worthless, we just need to have a nuanced and realistic view of what it is and what it is not. This new data on motivation is not surprising at all, and adds to our ability to properly interpret IQ testing.

Duckworth herself recognises that people who actually administer the tests will be well aware of the issue of motivation. She says, “Where the problem lies, in our view, is in the interpretation of IQ scores by economists, sociologists, and research psychologists who have not witnessed variation in test motivation firsthand. [They] might erringly assume that a low IQ score invariably indicates low intelligence.”

Is this view common? Sternberg thinks so, pointing to the fact that Duckworth’s study was newsworthy enough to be published in PNAS, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals. “[This shows] how off-track our society has gone in its acceptance of commercial persuasive appeals to buy into standardized tests as some kind of panacea for predicting almost any outcome in life that we value.

“The irony of the study is that it shows the tests indeed can be useful, but as joint measures of cognitive skills and motivation. The tests also indirectly measure many other variables, such as quality of schooling, type of socialization in the home, and parents’ ability to provide their children with a home environment that fosters the kinds of skills that tests measure. IQ tests, like all tests, are agglomerate measures of many things. They are not pure measures of some kind of “intelligence” or anything else.

The final example is where colourful comes into play. In anticipation of Global Handwashing Day, a non-profit group known as PooP Creative has come up with an interesting way to spread the word of hygiene and inadequate sanitation. It’s called The Golden Poo Awards. The invitation is specifically geared to 15-19 year olds and challenges them to develop a stand up comedy routine that will bring about awareness of handwashing and proper hygiene. Their reward: money and, not surprisingly, the Golden Poo Award.....

Perhaps the most endearing aspect of the role of germs in comedy is that even though many associate germs with dirt and filth and overall unclean environments, the actual use of comedy to highlight germs and hygiene is incredibly clean. With apologies to Mike Myers, the use of toilet humour in the past has done little to foster and/or encourage hygienic behaviour. However, with these three examples (and I am sure there will be more to follow), there can be a true adoption of hygiene as a real means by which we can not only stay safe and healthy, but also to have a good laugh.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Step 5 – Change the role of parents. As my little flipbook explains, the IDEA has a fundamental design flaw. That flaw is the requirement and expectation that parents will enforce it. Thus, if parents do not agree with a school’s program or program, they need to ‘advocate’ for the child and fight the school.
Instead, parents should be able to work with school and build positive relationships, and not be forced to ‘advocate’ for their child against their school. We need to end this design flaw.

As well, the law puts the onus for a child’s progress on the school district. Parents can sue schools if their children don’t receive a FAPE or make progress. My book discusses how the law fails to encourage parents to partner with schools for the benefit of their children.
The incentives in the law are wrong, and defy common sense.

Having a child with a disability is more than challenging enough. The law should not make it more difficult. It currently does exactly that.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Black Box Warning The ZBlogg contains doctors mashing medicine, music, and megalomania in an effort to educate and entertain. It is clinically proven to be slightly funnier than placebo. If you are allergic to wack rap parodies, absurd medical education videos, or healthcare news satire freshly beatboxed by some aging medical school buddies, please exit here.

We asked him to do a followup vaccine education rap to our previous effort, Immunize. Regrettably, his questionable research methods result in a bigger misunderstanding than any ever depicted on Three’s Company. The final product of his efforts is a rap video that would make Jenny McCarthy proud.

1-1/2 cups red wine, Kosher for Passover (I used Manischewitz--the recipe calls for cooking for a long time, so don't use good drinking wine)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon cloves

2 cup (125 g) tree nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, or almonds. I usually use a combination with hazelnuts predominating.)

2 small or one large tart green apple (I use Granny Smiths but orther dense, tart apple varieties are fine),

lemon juice

Procedure:

Chop the dates into pieces the size of your little fingernail. Dates are sticky, so you can either oil the knife or keep wiping the blade with a wet towel.

Put the dates into a pan with the wine, cinnamon, and cloves and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is soft. (Time will vary depending on how dry the dates are.)

While the dates are cooking, process the nuts into crumbs. You can do this by mincing the nuts with a knife, pounding them, by or using a food processor to chop the nuts into fine pieces. Stop well before you have nut butter -- you want little tiny pieces.

Prepare the apples. Core them, peel them, and then grate them. I use a mandoline rather than a food processor for this. I grate the apples into very acidulated water: 1 cup of water to 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, and stir the grated apples so they are all in contact with the acidic water. This prevents the appsles from turning brown while the rest of the process goes on.

When the dates are very soft, puree them in a food processor.

Combine the nuts, date puree, and apples. You can correct the seasonings as you like -- I added a bit more lemon juice to balance the sweetness of the dates.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) will be reauthorized within the next year or two.

To prepare for the reauthorization of IDEA, several disability organizations are sponsoring a survey that seeks to answer this question: "Are parents treated as equal partners in planning their children's education?"